


How It's Filed

by joyeusenoelle



Category: Indexing - Seanan McGuire
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 01:45:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5111795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joyeusenoelle/pseuds/joyeusenoelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jeff doesn't want to be an Archivist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How It's Filed

“I don’t want to go to Archives,” said Jeff.

Henry’s arm was across his chest. She looked up at his face. “I don’t want you to go to Archives.”

Jeff laughed and craned his neck to kiss her forehead. “I’m glad to hear that. But it’s more than just you.”

“What, I’m not enough?” She mock-pouted and he laughed some more.

“You’re plenty. But Archives scares me.”

“That’s surprising. It seems right up your alley.”

“Archive analysis is right up my alley. Being an archivist… I don’t think I could do that.”

“Why not?”

“There’s too much of a storyteller about an archivist.”

Henry’s face registered surprise. She scooted up so she could look him in the eyes. “What do you mean? It’s just filing stories, isn’t it?”

Jeff laughed again, quietly. “That’s closer to storytelling than I’d like.”

Henry sat up proper in the bed, ignoring the sheet that fell to her waist. “Okay, now I’m curious. How is archiving like storytelling?”

“You sound like Poe.”

“Poe was an amateur. Answer the question.”

Jeff sighed. “Okay. You have a… a Sleeping Beauty and a Prince Charming. They meet, they wreak some havoc, we contain them. Where does the file go?”

Henry paused. Finally, she said, “Two copies. One to the Sleeping Beauty section, one to the Prince Charming section.”

Jeff nodded. “Okay. And what if a Little Match Girl got caught up in the story?”

“Then a third copy goes to the Little Match Girl section.”

“And now what happens when someone needs to refer to that file to amend it?”

Henry opened her mouth to speak, and hesitated. “You have to amend all three files.”

“And that changes _your_ story, because what you thought was a simple amendment turns into an all-day affair as an assistant tracks down every file you have to touch. That’s why the Archives keeps a single copy of every event. But that introduces a different problem. You have to pick one section to file the copy in. Where does it go?”

Henry considered. “Well, Sleeping Beauty is the primary story there. Prince Charming is part of Beauty’s story, and the Match Girl just got tangled in it.”

“So you’re deciding that Sleeping Beauty is primary, and Prince Charming and the Little Match Girl are secondary.”

“I wouldn’t put a priority on it like that—”

“But that’s what you’re doing. You’ve set Sleeping Beauty ahead of Prince Charming and Little Match Girl. But how many times has that happened in the past to make you believe that Sleeping Beauty is the primary story? How many archivists have said ‘This story is about Sleeping Beauty, and Prince Charming is ancillary’?”

Henry didn’t say anything.

“Every time an archivist files a story they’re making a decision about how to reinforce the narrative. If the earliest archivists had started with masculine tropes then we’d be talking about Prince Charmings and seeing how they introduced Sleeping Beauties, and you’d be telling me that this was a Prince Charming story that had a Sleeping Beauty motif.”

“I see what you mean.” Henry leaned her head on Jeff’s shoulder.

“Heck, Henry, that’s not even the worst of it. What if a _new_ story shows up and I have to decide how to file it? My decision informs the whole process going forward. Everything people say about this trope depends on the decisions I’d make as an archivist.”

“Grimm.”

“And grim.” Jeff kissed the top of her head. “See why I want to stay in the field?”

“Yeah,” Henry said, and grinned. “At least in the field your decisions just save or take lives.”

“Exactly!” Jeff said, laughing again. “Lives are easy. Stories are _hard_.”


End file.
